Entries in Mike Pence
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Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind. (L) and David Stockman appear on ABC's 'This Week.' Photo Courtesy - ABC News(WASHINGTON) -- At a time of national fiscal crisis, Ronald Reagan picked David Stockman to fix the federal government's budget. This weekend Stockman told ABC News the U.S. is speeding down a path to fiscal ruin and that extending the Bush tax cuts will only hasten the looming catastrophe.

"Both parties, unfortunately, became free lunch parties,” the former director of the Office of Management and Budget said in a debate with Indiana Rep. Mike Pence on ABC’s This Week. “Republicans cutting taxes any time they had a chance, never doing anything about spending; Democrats digging in to defend everything that was there. As a result, we now have this massive deficit."

"We're now becoming the banana republic [of] finance, printing -- the Fed, these mad men who are out of control at the Fed are printing -- new money equal to 100 percent of the debt that we're issuing each month. This will not end well," Stockman said. "It's going to end in a disaster."

Stockman said that extending all the Bush tax cuts would be a bad idea. Pence disagreed.

"I don't think higher taxes is going to get anybody hired. I think raising taxes in the worst economy in 25 years is a profoundly bad idea," Pence said.

"The way we're going to put our fiscal house in order is you have to cut spending now," Pence said. "Everything has to be on the table. ... But you can't balance the budget on 9.6 percent unemployment," he said. "The last thing we should do is allow a tax increase on job creators in this country."

Stockman explained that raising taxes is normally "a bad thing to do," but that the United States "is in such dire shape that we have no choice but to accept the negative trade-off of some harm to the economy to start paying our bills," he said. "Otherwise, we're dependent on the Chinese, we're dependent on OPEC, we're dependent on a bunch of hedge-fund guys to buy our debt and this game is about over."